Being Grateful Is Healthy - Happy Thanksgiving!

Cultivating an "attitude of gratitude" is proving to have a beneficial effect on physical as well as mental health in addition to it's obvious spiritual connection.

Psychologist Robert Emmons of the University of California at Davis states that:

"Gratitude research is beginning to suggest that feelings of thankfulness have tremendous positive value in helping people cope with daily problems, especially stress, and to achieve a positive sense of the self."

Dr. Emmons found that in an experimental comparison, those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events.

It is not about naturally having a grateful disposition, that goes against how our brains developed. We have been programed for survival to processes threat assessments and therefore we are alerted to negative situations about 3:1 over positive situations. It is, as Dr. Emmons research suggests, about developing a habit of being grateful irregardless of circumstances. It is about looking for things to be grateful for.

Take Dr. Emmons quiz How Grateful Are You? over on Beliefnet.

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

The Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement

Thursday I will listen to Arlo Guthrie sing Alice's Restaurant again, all 18+ minuets of it, just as I have done for thirty or forty Thanksgivings.

But why is Alice's Restaurant so important to me? While recalling youthful memories and singing along with anti-war, anti-draft protest songs can be fun, Alice's Restaurant remains relevant to me for much deeper reasons. It is because the anti-war movement is still an important part of who I am.

Here it is thirty-seven years after getting my draft card during the last round of the Vietnam "draft lottery" and I am still preaching peace while wars continue to rage and our young men are still dieing on foreign soil.

That is why Alice's Restaurant remains so important to me. As long as our nation continues to send young men off to war I will be part of the anti-war movement.

Here is a video from Farm Aid 2005 of Arlo Guthrie singing Alice's Restaurant:




Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

Our Disposable Brave Service Men & Women

On Sept. 24, 2011 at a cemetery in Easton, PA, Maj. Bruce Lawrence was finally laid to rest on U.S. soil, approximately 43 years after his aircraft was shot down in Vietnam.

I can't believe that we are still burring our dead from the Vietnam War!

Today in a Washington Post article U.S. Air Force officials acknowledged that from 2003 to 2008 the Dover Air Force Base mortuary disposed of portions of troops’ remains (fragments and portions of body parts that were initially unidentified or were later recovered from the battlefield) by cremating them and dumping the ashes in a Virginia landfill.

Is this how we honor our fallen servicemen and women and their families?

We shouldn't be in these wars in the first place, but to literally dump their remains in a landfill shows just how "disposable" our brave men and women are to the warfare state!

"There never was a good war or a bad peace."
~Benjamin Franklin

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

(U.S. Air Force photo by 2nd Lt. Michael Gibson)

David Crosby & Graham Nash At OWS

In a show of support Tuesday, David Crosby and Graham Nash preformed at Occupy Wall Street, encouraging the crowd to "Keep going". Watch this Rolling Stone video with an interview of David and Graham on their way down to OWS.



Here is a two thousand year old warning to the 1% by the Apostle James:

And now, you rich people, listen to me! Weep and wail over the miseries that are coming upon you!

Your riches have rotted away, and your clothes have been eaten by moths. Your gold and silver are covered with rust, and this rust will be a witness against you and will eat up your flesh like fire.

You have piled up riches in these last days.

You have not paid any wages to those who work in your fields. Listen to their complaints! The cries of those who gather in your crops have reached the ears of God, the Lord Almighty.

Your life here on earth has been full of luxury and pleasure. You have made yourselves fat for the day of slaughter.
(James 5:1-5)

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)